


the girl who could have been

by Melisan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 18:37:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13530213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melisan/pseuds/Melisan
Summary: Parvati Patil, newly appointed Instructor of Charms at Hogwarts. Unmarried, failed in love, failed in life, trudging along, trying to adapt to life after school.





	1. Pansy Parkinson

A light drizzle falls on the cobbled stones of Diagon Alley, as I exit the wholesome warmth of the Leaky. A thick odd mist covers the streets in a plush billowing white fog, hiding my worn boots that groan to crack again after one too many reparo spells. Flourish and Blotts sit across the street, close enough to engender cracking a repelling charm frivolous, far enough to make certain I am drenched enough to annoy the shopkeeper when I enter. I smile at the thought of annoying her, so I navigate the streets like a tourist.

I am a tourist, in a way. It's been a while since I've been to Hogsmeade. The roads have grown wider, pushing the buildings away to allow your typical family Weasley coach to pass bidirectionally. Many of the old shops have gone out of style, making way for another Honeydukes shop, just in case you missed the one around the corner. Flourish and Blotts is still Flourish and Blotts, though, if only because it's the 'original 1454'. A statue of the founder of Flourish and Blotts now graces the entrance. He's quite generic for statues of the like. As far as I know, no one really knows who founded the original shop, and the statue was placed there during Hermione Granger's great redecoration of Diagon Alley. He's out in the rain, a caricature of Dumbledore unauthentically looking cowardly. Of course, he doesn't move. Lifelike paintings and statues cost extra charms, and charms require money. So, like most modern ornaments, this one stands stoically cringing, like a muggle statue. There is a plaque that I notice, only now, at his feet, and I risk a moment of additional drenching to bend over and read, hoping to find a name, perhaps, or some other unlikely description they've conjured up.

'Anti-Vandalism Charms and Runes in effect 24/7; Mad-Eye Securities'

Of course, Professor Moody died that year, when so many died. But his distant relatives didn't hesitate to snatch upon the chance of monetizing his name before they were bought out by the Weasleys. Where has all the magic gone, I ask myself. Again.

She's reading. Perched on the stairs in a space between stacks of schoolbooks. Hogwarts hadn't allowed the Weasley Any Book to replace traditional textbooks, though I don't think there was much of a philosophy behind it, but rather an understanding with the Malfoys who own Flourish and Blotts. She's pretty, still, with her sharp bangs of smooth dark hair and eyes of serpent green that would make any Slytherin proud. I heard rumors, recently that she struck up a fling with Draco again, though their tumultuous relationship often required significant money to silence her, which probably explained how she still looked so young.

"Pansy," I pull her from her reverie.

I had never known Pansy Parkinson to be much of a reader in her youth, but then again, neither was I. However, in recent years, this is how I always think of her, buried in the free books that she keeps hold of before selling. I don't think knowledge is what she gets from it, as oft I see her reading elementary charms textbooks. Perhaps she's reliving Hogwarts. A quill behind her ear, and drab dark robes, tightly clinging to her impressively slim figure in the fashion popularized by Lavender a few years ago, she looks hot enough to have evoked the rumors of her dalliance with Draco.

Pansy makes a deliberate pause to finish her reading, infuriatingly turning a page and placing her quill to bookmark her spot before she makes her way down to the counter.

"Parvati," she replies, nearly a full minute since I've entered the shop. "Parvati Patil, back in Hogsmeade. The Slug let you have a day off from doing his laundry?"

Pansy Parkinson, the girl I've always been at odds with, ever since we met at Charms school, ever since Hogwarts, walks over and gives me a warm hug before she notices I'm drenched wet. She snaps me a signature scowl before she dries my clothes with a flick of her wrist.

"You did that on purpose," she accuses, handing me a cup before she fills it with camomile. It's warm and, I daresay, probably spiked with a tiny bit of whiskey.

"You could have told me you were coming," she complains. "I have plans tonight, and it doesn't involve drinking. At least, not yet."

She grins mischievously on that last bit. Pansy and I began our intoxicated friendship only a few years ago. I had been chasing the Slug on his academic invitations abroad and had happened to slip out one night from my slavery thanks to a meet and greet where he distinctly told me I wasn't invited. Under the shadow of the Palace of Beauxbatons I found Pansy Parkinson in a bar. She had just been confronted by Daphne, ousted and shamed in public for her infidelities. For some reason, I joined her, and without arguing, name-calling, or insulting, we just drank the night away.  
It would have ended with that, a drunken night of two lost girls in France, had it not been that we started bumping into each other, again, and again, and again, making a habit of getting drunk and lost, and found.

"I'm actually here on business," I try to sound important, faux-pompous, striking up airs, as though slighted by my childhood nemesis, as I hand her my list of Required Reading. It doesn't take long as Pansy skims over the list to understand its implications. And I can't keep it to myself for long as Pansy bursts into a gleeful squeal.

"You got the job!" she jumps up and down excited, forgetting herself and showing her true colors. I am touched. I think it's the first time she's ever actually said anything nice to me. And years of unproclaimed friendship suddenly cements itself in one crystal clear emotion of shared enthusiasm.

"Parvati Patil, Professor of Charms!" Pansy exclaims, looking like she, too, is accepting that unspoken truth that we are probably friends, now, at last.

"Professor McGonagall contacted me just a few weeks ago," I explained, "Professor Flitwick was retiring, and he had gone through a list of names, before he recommended me."

That was an understatement. Naturally, Flitwick had to go through a couple of scrolls before he came up with mine. But Charms was a major academic field, and those who naturally excelled at Charms usually excelled at every other discipline. Hence, most of the names on the top of the list were up in the world with more important things to do than teaching children.

"I had to go through a lot of names," the Professor had confessed as he looked at me up and down with his beady goblin-like eyes. He turned over Slughorn's recommendation in his fingers. I hadn't been able to read it, but it seemed derisively short compared to my years of service.

"I know," I smiled back meekly, not wanting to hear the truth. I had been working as a lecturer at the Wizarding University under the Slug for nearly ten years. At first, I imagined I was preparing myself for a real job with some added academic credentials. It was a tough job market in the wizarding world.

"And I mean A LOT!" the Professor had grown a bit cranky in his twilight years.

"I suppose so," my smile maintains the meek submissiveness of someone who can barely support herself and her cat.

"When your name came up, well..."

I wanted to pierce his beady little eyes with my wand, but the rent was coming up, and Hogwarts Professors had the best pension plan in the world.

"Let's just say that," Flitwick had savored my discomfort with such relish, the little Monster, "I thought P Patil meant Padma."

No, despite what people thought, Padma wasn't the brightest star in our family. Well, not always, and, more importantly, not in this particular instance for this particular subject - which was all that mattered at the time.

"I heard McGonagall was recruiting Neville Longbottom from the Aurors," Pansy whispered with a wink, as though we were in for some conspiracy.

"It was in the papers," I reply glumly, reflecting on how quickly the topic of conversation sped from Me to Neville in less than sixty seconds. "'Star Auror steps down to pursue the passion of his life.'"

"I thought the passion of his life was Luna Lovegood," Pansy giggles. She's still quite the schoolgirl, still caught up on romances and 'who kissed who in the hallway'. Despite her jaded appearance, she will always be a gossip girl. I see where this is going. Endless gossip of everyone until we're out of names to talk about. Should we get chummy over our nostalgia, she'll take me out for a drink, I'll overstep my self-imposed limits, and I'll wake up on the floor of some stranger, again.

"That ship sailed a long time ago," I reply, not wanting to squash her enthusiasm for gossip and our just barely recognized friendship.

"Didn't you two have a thing?" Pansy is blunt, as I fail to rise to the bait.

"I've never had a thing with Neville," I snap. Yes, I did stand up for him when he was all small and round and barely had a good grasp of his own four limbs, and yes, that person whom I stood up to had been Pansy. But Pansy of all people should know I never had a thing with Neville, especially since most of my drunken travails with her had been about ... "Is  _He_ in town?"

"What?" Pansy tries to act innocent, but it's almost laughably theatrical. "I don't know who you're talking about."

I poke her viciously with my wand.

"Stop that!"

I poke her again.

"Alright!" she snaps. "He's set up a Clinic down the road. I thought you were over him!"

Figures.

"And I thought you were over Draco," I shoot back. Pansy shrugs, avoiding my gaze.

"I met Blaise when I went to give flowers to Astoria at Saint Mungo's," Pansy smiles, deliberately drawling, savoring her malice. I think my mind went to another place while she said that. Something inside me basically refused to believe Pansy would actually pay Astoria a visit in the hospital while she snogged Draco in secret. Then again, this was Pansy Parkinson, and she had been my nemesis all my life for a reason.

In that instance, I forget about Blaise. And I forget about Flitwick. I try to forget about the Slug, even though he's left an indelible impression on my life. All I see is Pansy Parkinson, thirty something, going on forty. Pansy Parkinson, who looks as young as when she graduated Hogwarts, and probably spent all her hush money to keep herself that way. Pansy Parkinson, who tries to seem so aloof, yet cries her heart out and drinks herself to death.

And I see me.

I see the vain girl who knows her mistakes and foolishness, yet isn't quite so wise to face today's challenges with the wisdom of such retrospect. I see the old spinster, lost in the world bereft of guidance where teachers prey on students, and education makes deals with the devil. I see the lost girl set in a maze of a world that left her behind as it races to annihilation, just trying to make ends meet.

So I laugh. I laugh with her. She laughs at her own audacity. I laugh at my situation. We laugh heartily. We laugh and laugh until Pansy wisely decides she needs more Whiskey than Cammomile. We don't need to go out into the rain again, as she closes shop early, and leads me to the back where she keeps her dirty secrets behind a stack of books. We will probably drink the night away on a bed that I'm sure Draco had visited whenever he could escape his invalid wife and her rightfully suspicious sister.

It's an odd thing how Pansy, or others like her latch on to their school years all their lives. You think that you would grow out of it. For me, I hadn't thought much about Hogwarts all the while I was with the Slug. Despite the on-the-nose presence of my former potions master becoming my boss, he had never been a guiding presence to me back then. Assisting him in his research in the pioneering field of Charm Runification, as he put it - but I hate that word- had been pretty much apart from my experience at Hogwarts. Who would have known I would have become a researcher in the new age of technomancy. I suppose everyone could easily extrapolate Harry's life hence from that blackest of days; becoming an Auror, the youngest Head Auror, and then the Secretary of Magical Law Enforcement. Anyone could have guessed Hermione Granger was going places. And Ron did have a quirky flair to his soul, tempered by his brother's death, and rising to become the most prominent Weasley among his horde of siblings. They have had a distinct notion in life, if not descriptive, of getting 'somewhere'. I suppose anyone could have guessed Lavender would make it like she did in the fashion world.

I don't resent anyone's success. Merlin! No! 

I am just sincerely wondering where my life is going. 

"Astoria doesn't have much longer," Pansy is calm when she says that, almost dry.

Had I imagined Pansy would be sincerely elated after Astoria's passing? I am being Pansy Parkinson's confessor, watching the black ooze of her malice break out and ooze from her porcelain shell, cracked open by some sort of personal wound. 

"Oh," I suppose is all I can say. "Gosh."

Pansy's small cramped backroom is quite decorative, like a museum of memories trinkets of her past hang in this crypt. Hogwarts memorabilia, pictures, some mildly impressive personal artwork with watercolors, I would say, was a small resume of who Pansy had become. Nay. Resume was the wrong word, I catch myself. Resumes are people looking to the future. 

There is something missing here, though. Something I can't fundamentally come to grips with to become Pansy's friend, in the true sense, in the sense that, well, Lav had been. I don't share anything with her other than regret and heartbreak. But that's not it, quite. And it takes a regrettably long time until I can finally ask her my fundamental itch. 

"What about their boy, Pansy? What happens to Scorpius?" Other than the ridiculous name only someone like Draco could possibly conjure, I have to ask. Even if it chills the temperature in the room a bit. Even if I am suddenly finding my welcome suddenly evaporating. 

Pansy glares at me a while. She doesn't speak. I know I've misspoken. Not because it was wrong to bring up the child caught in the middle of his parent's infidelities, but because it really wasn't her responsibility, was it? The onus was on Draco, and less on Pansy. It didn't absolve Pansy, but still to demand responsibility on Pansy...

I cover my mouth. 

It has always been so with Pansy. Not quite the child of Death Eaters, yet caught up in the vortex of their demise. 

"School teacher," Pansy shakes her head, spitting out the word with venom and bile. "A whole load of children will flock to my door in a few days, covering their grubby hands on my books. Children. I sincerely hope you enjoy your time with them, Patil. Because you don't seem to be the nurturing type."

 


	2. Lavender Brown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavender Brown, Ron Weasley, and how the world goes around.

The sun peeks out low through the murky low hanging greenish grey clouds late in the afternoon.

It took me just a few hours to wear out my welcome, leaving me on the wet cobbles, again, aimless. Taking in the breath of the damp streets of Hogsmeade, I can't help but feel betrayed how these stone streets let me down, again. 

My head is heavy with the hangover of various liquids that started off with Whiskey but ended with vaguely curious bottles with long lost labels. A trick Blaise taught me involved an infusing spell with water mist cleared most of it away, but I still found myself struggling for a cigarette in the back of Knockturn Alley. It's a muggle brand, with grisly disfigured monsters decorating the packets. My coat robes, only yesterday had desperately tried to look young, failed miserably falling into a disheveled damp crumpled mess that drooped about my shoulders, not quite erasing the past few hours. 

Hogsmeade wasn't so flashy as of old, but it still held several important sites of 'origin' that the newer magical cities considered sacred. The first Flourish and Blotts, the first Weasley's, the first Leaky, and the first Ollivanders all were located here, not to mention the first Madame Lavender's. I know it was purely by chance that Lavender's first shop was located across the street from Ron's first Weasley's, as Lavender had ousted Madame Malkin to be come the premiere Wizarding fashion designer, while Ron had grown his brothers' joke shop into a vast industry of magical appliances. But it was almost comical how Lavender's signature look, dressed in shocking white and black, vogueing on a towering canvas that hung over the shop's front door, faced Ron's smaller image standing beside his brother and father, portraits greeting worshipers of Ron who tread the first Weasley shop as holy ground. Ron once dated Lavender back in the day and, frankly, I get pestered about the two more than tales about the Chosen One. It's surprising to think of Ron as a sidekick to Harry, nowadays, nor to think that Padma had ditched Ron at the Yule Ball back in '94.  
Roger, Padma's husband, works for the Weasleys, specifically for Percy, the CFO. Officially Roger's title is VP, but you wouldn't know it if you saw him on the phone. He rarely comes home to Padma and my three nephews, though he did furbish me a Weasley Fellytone-X before I left for Hogwarts. I would have thanked him if I didn't know Padma had pestered him into getting me one, and I would have thanked Padma had I didn't know she probably wanted to make sure everyone knew Roger worked for the Weasleys. The Daemon inside the Fellytone is still working up, or most likely still hasn't acclimatized itself to my preferences.

As I approached Lavender's, my Daemon squeaked out from his shell, "Twenty percent discount at Madame Lavender's on her line of Spring/Summer purses."  
"I'm not here to shop," I growl, under my breath.  
There's a queue of people lining the front door to Lavender's, a thick lavender ribbon hung between two poles demarcating in and elsewhere. Most of them are tourists from distant lands. Most of them already have some accessories with the LB logo. I might have to stand in line to see Lavender. I am an idiot to have not seen this coming.

But Lavender and I haven't been speaking for years. She had changed quite a bit during her last year at Hogwarts. First the trouble with Ron, and then the Battle. If Ron's sudden fallout with Lavender hadn't been traumatic enough, Lavender had been mauled by Fenrir Greyback to within an inch of her life. She didn't become a Werewolf, thank Merlin, but successive rabbits that she maintained were the same Mister Binky kept disappearing once in a while. I think it's a testament to how the world has changed that devouring her pet rabbit wasn't the principle change that took over Lavender. Lavender had grown cold, distant, and more focused. She had started out as Madame Malkin's apprentice, learning the craft. Sometime while I had lost touch with her she had taken over Madame Malkin completely. I had assumed it was just a peaceful succession and had congratulated her on the occasion, but she didn't write back. I only understood how 'hostile' a takeover she did perform when Blaise told me he saw Madame Malkin had been turned away from Saint Mungo's because she couldn't afford her pain medications.

Hence, I approached the front of the queue, earning scathing whispers from the line and a look of disbelief from the employee at the door, looking pretty much like a bum. I used to be proud of how I looked once, but the years have put on some weight and blemished the skin, and now I am nervous under the younger woman's stare, more aggravatingly curious how she would size me up than annoyed.

  
"Back of the line, Madame," was the greeting I received in a decidedly false French accent. I've been called a 'Madame', and I'm not sure if that is a vernacular of Madame Lavender's for "old woman" or "married woman", neither which is pleasing. She's a young girl, fashion perfect, dressed from head to toe in Lavender's wear, complete with the cute little diamond earrings shaped like crescents and a pink cashmere scarf. An aquiline nose and haughty blue eyes rove over me, weighing my worth, finding me lacking, ridiculously so.  
"I'm here to see Lavender," I replied, understanding how far fetched I must have sounded. "I'm a friend."  
She looks at me up and down, this girl half my age and probably just out of Hogwarts.  
"Of course you are," she replied with a chirpy attitude, "Appointment?"  
"No, but-."  
"Back of the line."  
She has a golden oval nametag etched "Giselle", but I don't think that's her real name. I look glumly down at my Fellytone that doesn't have Lavender's contact.  
"I'm not here to shop, I just dropped in to say hello."  
Giselle shrugs but doesn't deign to reply. Instead, she decides to ignore me, pointedly letting a couple of shoppers in before she drapes the ribbon back between the two poles that seem to draw the line between the dirty streets from where I've sprung up from, and the rich polished chic of the parlor.  
"There's no way I'm going to convince you to let me see her, is there?" I am speaking mostly to myself. Before Giselle could give me another careless shrug, I walk back behind the queue and into the alley behind the building, even as the line occasionally jeers at me as I pass by.

Even as I begin working my charms, a distant memory fluters by, of an evening, one of our last. 

"There's this girl at work," Lavender was complaining. "Total lifeless hack. No passion. Do you want to hear something funny?"

"Sure," I shake my head and my glass of wine. Lavender loves her red wine. 

Lavender tosses me a scathing look, but continues. "She's totally up Malkin's ass. The other day she suggested that we all pool our work for presentation!"

"Oh," I fail to catch on. 

"She's prepping us up for easy pickings. My portfolio will just be laid bare for Malkin to take credit for." She crosses her arms. 

"Gosh," I exclaim. I can sympathize with that. "Sorry, Lav. I know how hard you've been working on that. Perhaps you could approach Madame Malkin about this?"

She glares at me, shaking her head. 

"You are the seed of your own situation," Lavender told me sagely.

That wasn't what I wanted to hear back then, and I would probably sock her in the teeth if she said that to me even today. I hated  _driven_ Lavender. I didn't know how much I have begun to despise her until that night.

"What's that, Lav?" 

"Why don't you pick yourself up, Parvati?" Lav asked.

"When did this become something about me?" I am flabergasted. I should be the one angry, but somehow Lavender is pursuing me with vicious zeal, and I find myself at the center of her crosshairs.

Lavender snorted. "You're like a broken record, Parvati. Blaise keeps belittling you and you-," she wags a finger to keep me from denying, "you think you're saying no, but you're really saying yes. You say 'yes, my mouth smells foul after my filthy habit', 'yes, I drink too much', 'yes, I don't like my job', 'yes, I'm unworthy'. You say it because you don't change. You're always going to be this bulimic headcase-."  
"Merlin! Is that what you think of me?"  
And Lavender had said Yes. She said Yes, picked up her purse, and left. I think she owes me an apology. So I screamed into the Howler- that was before the Fellytone. I returned the favor. I told her that she was a crazy frigid bitch who didn't have a friend in the world, now that I won't be there for her anymore. I told her that everyone at Madame Malkin's hated her. I told her that she was a joke who never could quite get over Ron choosing Hermione Granger over her. And I told her I agreed with Ron, one hundred percent. I had been angry, true. But she started it, didn't she?  
I don't think I had a chance to be awkward with her, after that. We did see each other before the Slug took me off to slave for him during his sabbatical.

Invisibility is a tough cookie, but a couple of Look Away charms, and a couple of patches of Silence Runes soon keeps even the pigeons from noticing me levitating up along the wall. Lavender's office would be on the top floor, the one with the balcony terrace.

The terrace definitely has a private flair. A canopy unnecessarily casts a shade under the gloomy weather over a single seated table with a cup of hot coffee still fuming. A sketch tossed to the floor with Lav's signature garnet studded pens show a prototype design that a younger me would have swooned over. Once I used to hoard the Young Witch like crazy. Now I prefer very very loosely fitting robes. The customers here are generally more of the wealthier sort than young. Lavender has a young witches' shop down the alley where the more youthful now hang out. She has also taken over the actual magazine "Young Witches" as well.

"I am a little feather," I sing to myself softly as I land tiptoe on the terrace. The large glass doors are left open to her private rooms, sleek modern deco of white black and lavender. From inside, I think I hear her. Such spacious rooms, so pretty and chic. Jealousy is an understatement. Her life is practically smothering me, overwhelming me. I am a bit frightened of what she would say once she sees me. She'll understand, I hope.  
I creep along the hallways, admiring the artwork, and the artwork admiring me. They're the old fashion type. Pictures with life, like we had back at Hogwarts. These cost a fortune now. Where has all the magic gone, I wonder. The end of the hall is a stairwell leading down, so I turn in the other direction, following her voice. I am positive it's her voice.

It's coming from the room at the end of the hall. I can't make out what she's saying but she's not quite herself; more accurately, she's quite beside herself. I hear shouting and arguing. No, not arguing, just shouting. It's only Lavender's voice, and whoever she's shouting to don't respond in kind.

"And now you bring me this rubbish?" Lavender was shrieking. "This outdated piece of rag? Ho, ho, you are so full of yourself. Did you think you could just traipse in here and ask a favor like that, just because we knew each other at Hogwarts?"

Lavender must have tossed something; I hear something shatter. Perhaps I should leave. I'll come again when the semester's underway. Lav would understand that I didn't call her up. Or perhaps I should have brought something, a present, a gift, anything to show my good will. I fumble about my pocket, but all I find is my packet of cigarettes which I crave right now.

"Get out!" she screams. "Giselle! Giselle! Get Giselle up here!"

I have to get out of here!

I turn to leave, to make it back to the terrace. Giselle was at the front gate, so she'll take a while to get up-

"Giselle!" I squeak, as Giselle apparates in front of me.

I am stuck between Lavender and her lackey. I wish I could just shrivel up and die for the shame.

She gives me a foul glare, upturns her nose and marches past.

 _I remember when we were young, Lav. Tentatively stepping into the small dormitory that was_ Griffindor _Tower. You were the prettiest girl I ever saw. And you looked_ over _us, Hermione and me, and you chose me to be your best friend, instinctively._  
 _I remember how we would huddle up together and read the Young Witches, cutting out pictures and making scrapbooks. I remember how you scorned Hermione and asked me to join in. Sometimes I wonder what I would have been had I been more of Hermione's friend than yours. But then both you and Hermione went up in the world, walking your own separate paths. Where, now, is the brave Gryffindor Lioness who was so proud she wore crimson than blue. Here I sulk about your doorway._

_I will miss you._

Screaming.

It all happens so fast. Giselle, her short bangs fluttering, screams as she runs out of the room. Alarms ring about the building and the draperies that hang about the corridors slam down to form an iron curtain.

"Call the Aurors!" Giselle screams. "Call the Aurors!"

I try to move forward, anxious. The room is surprisingly breezy, and the wet cold wind flutters into the room. On the floor I see Lavender, beautiful and tall as ever, with a wisp of red hair dyed into her bleached blond. Her lips are red and continues to change hue with the light, and her lithe figure is draped by an exquisite yellow Hypogriff feathered robe. She is lying in a pool of crimson, curled up as though posing as a lioness ready to pounce. I imagine, for a brief moment, she is like an inverted emblem of Gryffindor.

Why is she on the floor? I rush over, fear clutching my heart.

"Lav?"


End file.
